mouthed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of mouth.

   She mouthed a silent thank-you as the train pulled away.

   The actor had mouthed every line during rehearsal before the cameras rolled.

   Note

   A regular -ed form that does double duty: she mouthed the answer (past) and he has mouthed it (participle). Often the act is silent, with words shaped by the lips but not voiced. The same form can also mean declaimed too loudly. Of an animal, it means taken gently in the mouth without chewing, as in the puppy mouthed the slipper. The object usually tells you which meaning is intended.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a mouth or opening of a specified kind, with the kind named by a preceding descriptive word.

   The vase was wide-mouthed enough to hold a large bouquet.

   Biologists classified the small-mouthed specimens separately from the rest.

   Note

   A combining form rather than a free adjective. In current use it attaches to a describing word with a hyphen, as in round-mouthed or wide-mouthed, and it rarely stands alone. The compound does not take more or most: a jar is round-mouthed or it is not. Do not confuse it with the past tense of the verb. She mouthed the words is about speaking, not shape.

3. 3
   verbrare

   Simple past tense and past participle of mouthe (rare).

   Note

   This form belongs to mouthe, a rare spelling of the verb mouth. Its past is therefore indistinguishable from the ordinary past of mouth, and nothing on the page shows which base a writer had in mind. As a noun, mouthe is simply an obsolete spelling of mouth. For present-day writing, treat the base as mouth; the meanings are the same.

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